Witness: Mazzaglia told him to keep Lizzi Marriott's death a 'secret'

DOVER — Just before Paul Hickok was shown the dead body of Elizabeth “Lizzi” Marriott, her accused killer Seth Mazzaglia asked him if he could “keep a secret,” Hickok testified Wednesday.

Elizabeth Dinan

Editor's note: This story includes graphic content.

DOVER — Just before Paul Hickok was shown the dead body of Elizabeth “Lizzi” Marriott, her accused killer Seth Mazzaglia asked him if he could “keep a secret,” Hickok testified Wednesday.

“My response was that it depends what the secret is,” Hickok testified in the Strafford Superior Court. “As soon as we entered, I got about 10 feet in and saw a dead body, or what I assumed was dead.”

Hickok’s testimony came during the fourth week of a murder trial for Mazzaglia, 31, on charges alleging he strangled Marriott, 19, to death on Oct. 9, 2012, in his Dover apartment. In addition to Hickok, testimony also came Wednesday from the mother of Mazzaglia’s codefendant and ex-girlfriend, Kathryn “Kat” McDonough, two subpoenaed inmates, and a state trooper.

Hickok testified that the night Marriott died, his girlfriend Roberta Gerkin received a phone call from McDonough who said she needed help but, he said, they had no details. He said they drove to Mazzaglia’s apartment at about 10 p.m., were first greeted by McDonough, then Mazzaglia. When he got inside their studio apartment, he said, he saw a woman’s body on the floor, wearing just underwear and with bags on her head.

“We asked him to take the bags off the person’s head,” Hickok said. “When the bags came off, I saw a head very swelled up and purple with marks around the throat. It looked like (the lines) came from the bags. The bags looked like they were tied very tight.”

Hickok said Gerkin and Mazzaglia then checked for a pulse, while McDonough was in a kitchen area crying.

Mazzaglia put his hands on his head and seemed “very confused,” Hickok said.

“He said he blacked out, that he’d gone too far,” Hickok testified. “We recommended that he call an ambulance or the police and do the right thing. The last time we mentioned it to him, he said that he would.”

After about 20 minutes at the apartment, Hickok said, he and Gerkin left and never reported what they saw until police showed up at their home days later.

“The biggest reason we didn’t do anything is because we wanted them to take responsibility themselves,” he said.

Hickok is scheduled to be cross-examined when the trial resumes Thursday morning.

Mazzaglia is charged with two “alternate theory” counts of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree murder, two counts of hindering apprehension for murder, witness tampering, falsifying physical evidence and solicitation of escape.

McDonough was convicted 11 months ago for helping Mazzaglia dispose of Marriott’s body off Peirce Island in Portsmouth and for witness tampering.

Also testifying Wednesday was McDonough’s mother, Denise McDonough, who said she and her daughter “really enjoyed each other’s company” until the fall of 2012 when Kat was “almost 18 and looking forward to being 18.” Then, she said, Kat’s contact with her began to diminish.

She said was unaware that Kat, a Portsmouth High School senior at the time, was dating Mazzaglia until she moved in with him in February 2012. She found out, she said, by reading a two-page note Kat left on her bed.

“It said basically, ‘I’m gone, I moved out, don’t try to contact me, I will contact you when I’m ready,’” Denise McDonough testified.

Their contact became “very, very minimal,” only seeing each other three times between February and October 2012, she said. This was in spite of her repeated efforts to contact Kat by telephone, email and through social media, she said.

Denise McDonough testified that she left messages for Kat with Mazzaglia, but “she never called me back.” Two weeks after Kat moved out, she said, she thought she convinced her to move back home and went to the Dover apartment she shared with Mazzaglia, where he came into a hallway and “almost shut the door behind him.”

“The thought of someone blocking me from my daughter” she said, was “upsetting.” She said Mazzaglia asked her to leave and she called him “a pedophile.”

“I was very angry at someone who was not allowing me to see my daughter,” she said.

She said police officers responded to a noise complaint, she told them her daughter was refusing to come home, and was told Kat was 18 so there was nothing they could do, Denise McDonough testified.

“So I went home,” she said.

After Mazzaglia was arrested, Denise McDonough said, she resumed contact with Kat by giving her rides from Mazzaglia’s mother’s home, where Kat was living, to work and to visit Mazzaglia in jail. After her daughter was arrested Dec. 24, 2012, she lived with her mother in Portsmouth, until she was sentenced to prison, Denise McDonough testified.

She said her daughter has never discussed the circumstances of Marriott’s death with her.

Under cross-examination by Mazzaglia’s attorney Joachim Barth, Denise McDonough said she discouraged Kat from developing a relationship with Mazzaglia because of their age difference. She said her marriage was poor at the time and that Kat had a strained relationship with her father. She denied suggestions that Kat was physically abused or demeaned by her father.

Inmate Christopher Ramos, now jailed in Manchester, was brought to the Strafford County Courthouse in cuffs and shackles Wednesday when he testified he didn’t want to be there, but was forced to by subpoena. He said he was housed in the Dover jail with Mazzaglia in 2012 when Mazzaglia told him he was incarcerated because someone died during a sexual threesome.

Ramos said Mazzaglia told him he blacked out while having sex with someone, while his girlfriend “was positioned at the head.”

“He said he blacked out and came to,” Ramos said.

The inmate testified that Mazzaglia told him he planned to use that as a defense and would arrange for medical exams through his lawyers.

Ramos said Mazzaglia told him Marriott had marks on her neck, was “discolored” and was shaking. He said Mazzaglia told him he didn’t know who caused the marks on Marriott’s neck and that two of his friends saw Marriott’s body but did not call authorities.

Ramos said Mazzaglia told him Marriott’s body was wrapped in a tarp, driven in Marriott’s car to Portsmouth, then pushed into the Piscataqua River. Ramos testified Mazzaglia told him the story in pieces, over a period of time, and that he reported it to authorities because “it was the right thing to do.” He said he received no benefit from reporting it.

“Like I said, I thought it was the right thing to do,” he said.

Ramos also testified that Mazzaglia was “obsessed” with his girlfriend and was “kind of controlling, a little bit.” He said he overheard jailhouse phone conversations Mazzaglia had with McDonough, including telling her he wanted to marry her.

“I told him if he married her she couldn’t testify against him,” he said.

Ramos said Mazzaglia told him “he’s not stable mentally,” “had blackouts all his life” and “sees things move” that aren’t actually moving. Ramos said Mazzaglia showed no remorse and seemed only to care about McDonough.

He also confirmed earlier testimony by McDonough that she deposited $15 into his jailhouse commissary account and that Mazzaglia was “deep into” tarot cards.

Barth confronted Ramos about his pending charge of failing to register as a sex offender and repeatedly told Ramos he stood to get a lighter sentence for offering information about Mazzaglia. Ramos denied he was getting any deal, or that he ever did.

“Actually I’ve done so much bad in my life I was trying to do something good, how’s that?” he said. “It’s about me doing something right for once.”

Barth prompted Ramos to confirm that he’s served 26 years cumulatively in jails and prisons and that he elicited information from Mazzaglia as part of “a plan” to use the information “as currency” for negotiating his own sentence.

“I never got anything out of it and I’m not getting anything out of it now,” Ramos said. “I’m in handcuffs, it’s your job to discredit me. Go for it, man.”

Also under cross-examination, Ramos testified Mazzaglia told him he had sexual contact with Marriott before she died, with his girlfriend’s permission. He confirmed, at Barth’s prompting, that Mazzaglia described Marriott’s death as “an accident they did not anticipate” and that’s why they didn’t call police.

Ramos also confirmed that he told investigators he was afraid McDonough would “do it again.”

“They both did it,” he testified Wednesday.

Ramos testified that there’s “nothing to do” in jail and Mazzaglia’s tarot card readings, including to jail nurses, was “a way to pass the time.” He then said he’s also obsessed with his fiance and it’s common among inmates who wonder what their partners are doing while they’re incarcerated.

“When you have someone out there who you really, really care about, it makes time really hard,” he said.

Also testifying Wednesday morning was Andrew Sibik, another shackled inmate who said he was housed in the Dover jail’s medical unit with Mazzaglia and Ramos. He said Mazzaglia read tarot cards and took them seriously because “it seemed like he needed direction in his life.”

“It was weird,” Sibik said. “It was like he was channeling energy from the cards.”

Sibik said Mazzaglia told him Marriott suffered a seizure during a sex act when he “put her in a position” and that there were “strangle marks around her neck.”

He said Mazzaglia told him a male friend of a woman named Roberta went to Mazzaglia’s apartment, saw the deceased and said “We gotta kill it.” He said Mazzaglia also told him the man tried to strangle Marriott, Mazzaglia tried to stop it and the next thing he knew Marriott was in a tarp.

“He just said he woke up and she was rolled up in a rug and then a tarp,” Sibik said.

N.H. State Police Sgt. Sara Hennessey, of the Major Crimes Unit, testified Wednesday and said that while she was investigating Marriott’s death, she met with Kat McDonough Oct. 12, 2012, at the Best Buy store in Newington. The trooper said Mazzaglia was with McDonough and they all went to the Newington police station. She said Mazzaglia claimed he had an injured knee “in a loud boisterous way” that was “almost too loud.”

She said she conducted a 90-minute recorded interview with Kat McDonough who said she planned to meet Marriott the day she died, but Marriott never showed up. McDonough told the trooper Mazzaglia went for a jog the same evening.

Hennessey said Kat reported having gone to a convenience store that night, but when pressed for details, she said she only looked in the store window. The trooper said Kat claimed her phone died, but later said she sent a text to Marriott when her phone was supposedly dead.

The trooper said when she mentioned the names of Gerkin and Hickok to Kat McDonough, “The color drained from her face and she continued to lick her lips and her tongue got very thick.”

Hennessey said Kat McDonough then refused to cooperate further, but stayed at the Newington police station for several more hours “making bracelets” from wire and yarn.

The trooper testified that she arrested Kat McDonough Dec. 24, 2012, at her job at Michael’s in Newington. She also answered in the affirmative when Barth asked if Kat’s 90-minute interview was a lie.

Kat McDonough is serving 1½ to three years in prison, in exchange for cooperating with authorities and offering testimony during Mazzaglia’s trial. On Monday, she ended 10 days of testimony and cross-examination.

Prosecutor Peter Hinckley argues that Mazzaglia strangled Marriott from behind with a rope before he raped her and then plotted to get rid of her body and evidence. That’s the same story McDonough told when she was called to testify at trial and that she told to a grand jury, leading to the promise of immunity and a light prison sentence.

Barth alleges McDonough killed Marriott during consensual bondage sex by sitting on her face for 10 to 15 minutes while Marriott was bound with rope. McDonough previously told that story to Mazzaglia’s legal team, but now calls it a lie.

Marriott’s phone last pinged at Mazzaglia’s Dover apartment, court records state. Her body was never found, in spite of land and water searches by multiple agencies.

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